ylwashington
This is a Spoiler, so please do not read, if you don't want to know the movie plot. I was in the mood for some good old scare the sh$$ out of me night. The title looked pretty interesting, so we thought we give it a try. When I saw the mismatch of the husband and wife, i knew this was gonna be an interesting movie. That pretty much bothered me, but i said. oh well, maybe this guy knows the director or something. The first 15 minutes were cool and I was really into it. The IM conversation that the daughter was having with Salem, started to get on my nerves and I thought that point was useless. Not sure what type of computer she has, where it cuts on and off by itself like that. The day and night scenes all in the same take was obvious bloopers and editing issues. The chic coming in the house and killing herself with the extremely fast boiling water scene, should have been cut out. Not one time, did anyone ever find her body in the Kitchen, nor did the scene or lady ever come back up in the movie. Very bad editing...The part that really did it for me was when the wife was hanging by the rope towards the end of the movie and the husband comes in there to pour gas on her and hug her..Her eyes are blinking and I just died laughing at that point..I mean, please cut that scene out and let her get some blinks in, if she can't keep her eyes closed long enough..LMAO..Also, not sure, how the husband fell from three floors and gets up and walks around again. The previous husband in the beginning of the movie, had the same fall and he died. Anyhow, great Comedy and not horror. Enjoy..
FlashCallahan
The Downs family move to Salem so that Wayne can start his new job as the town Sheriff.They move in to an old house that has a macabre history, witches were hanged there in the 1600's.There's an urban legend that a family were killed in the same house years earlier.After a while the Downs family discover that there's more to the legend and to the house than the towns people are letting on..So it's half Amityville, and half the Shining, it's nowhere as good as either of those movies, but also it's nowhere as near as bad as what the critics are saying.It's rarely scary, and the film does consist of the lead actor (who looks like a bargain Viggo Mortensen) running around the house trying to get away from all the bad acting and the constant vomiting of his daughter.Obviously she is ill so weird thins happen to her, and then she becomes evil, but it will look like the Sheriff will get the blame, because all the sheriffs who live in that house turn evil.Maybe the Mayor (who looks like a bargain basement Jeffrey Wright) should have changed the locale.So all in all, it's not scary, baseball bat sounds are out of synch, and the village idiot has a stutter.I've seen worse, not many though.
frompkin
This is a terrible film. One, it's not actually filmed in Salem (a minor quibble, but you'd think they'd hide the orange trees in the yard). Two, it's not scary. Third, and finally, the production values were horrible. For example: the sheriff is digging in the yard and it's daylight, while the mother comforts the daughter at the same time and the windows are completely dark (as in, it's night time). Additionally, why kill the historian? She shows up twice; once to hand out a "welcome packet" to the family, and when she returns, boils her face in water and then the body disappears. Why?? She must have been dating someone or just needed the screen time to get credit or something. The actors did a decent enough job with the material, but the editing was bad, the script was bad.. I wouldn't even recommend this for "bad movie night".In the end, the film comes off as a college project, not a sequel to the "A Haunting in.." series. The concept was good, but I can definitely see why this film went straight to video. It was pretty much craptastic. Better luck to all the actors in their future endeavors, and hopefully they can stay away from this kind of drek in the future. I guess everyone has to start out somewhere.
Paul Magne Haakonsen
Based on the image on the DVD cover, I was looking forward to this movie, because it really did look interesting on the cover. Just goes to prove, don't just a movie by it's cover, eh? And also that it were to take place in legendary Salem.While watching it, it because painstakingly clear that this movie was not really all that great. The story was good enough, though there really wasn't anything new to be seen here. Nothing to revolutionize the horror genre. So don't expect to be surprised and be sitting in awe.The one thing that this movie had going on for it, was the atmosphere. The house itself was really nicely done, lots of really great details here, and they had managed to carve out a really greet feel to the house and its surrounding. Old houses are genuinely creepy.As for the cast, well I didn't recognize a single one here. And in itself that was good enough, because I enjoy watching a movie with new faces in it. However, the bad thing was that there were no really overly convincing performances here. It was as it almost all people were in this movie half-heartedly. The most memorable, though, were the two teenagers; Jenna Stone and Nicholas Harsin.My low rating of this movie is because it just wasn't scary. The movie trotted on at a really slow pace, despite things happening, what happened wasn't scary. It was a dread to look at sometimes, because I wished more scary stuff would happen. There was only a single time in the entire movie that I got spooked, and without saying too much, then it was the scene where the sheriff was laying down on the bed to go to sleep.And one thing did puzzle me. What was the thing with the sheriffs and having to douse everything in gasoline to torch it all down when they found their families dead? I am pretty sure that kind of behavior is not what people do, much less trained police men, in such situations. That was just downright ridiculous.If you like horror movies, then "A Haunting in Salem" is not really a great choice, because you will be sorely disappointed.